Yep... I'm talkin' about CLOTH. Nappies, dipeys, CD'ing... whatever you call it or however you know it by- I love it! I've been cloth diapering for over 18 months. I began this journey when Phoebe was ready for potty training and we started with lots of different stuff (prefolds and wraps to pocket diapers to fitteds and more!). With Stephen we spent about $20/week just on newborn diapers and even after we started cloth-ing he was still in disposables at night and on the go. Needless to say our grocery store bill went down drastically when we stopped 'sposies and even MORE when we went to exclusively using cloth wipes.
Obviously- I used disposables for 18 months exclusively with my daughter and part time with my son for 10 months. There was one main reason I didn't do cloth... POO! My original thinking was I hate dealing with the brown yuckiness and that's why it took until potty training Phoebe for me to realize that getting a bit of poo on your hands is not the worst thing in the world. That's what soap is for. I figured if I can handle big girl poo then I can handle baby poo. Seriously- cleaning poop off a toilet-training toddler is MUCH worse than handling a poopy diaper. The second objection to cloth diapering was it's confusing! SO much information lies in wait on the internet and it's quite overwhelming. What is this whole "dry-pail" anyway? We ended up experimenting with different "systems" before finalizing on Stephen's fitteds and prefolds with wraps with a dry pail method. Third, most of the cost is up front. You buy the "stash" and necessary supplies to start out and thankfully with Phoebe most was given to us by retired cloth-mamas. With Stephen we spent about $200 on his stuff and most of it came from Craigslist. After that initial expense the only thing that cost us was water and electricity and cleaning detergent which actually comes out to pennies per diaper per month and of course my time and energy in washing/drying/putting away (but since I love it so much this doesn't phase me one bit and I've learned just to put it into the regular home routine). My last objection was "But my house is going to stink like crazy!". How in the world could it smell any worse than it did? Disposables stank up the house more than any cloth diaper could. I can't smell the pail until I open it and honestly- it doesn't smell any worse than a room with a can containing one or two sposies.
Here I am 18 months into cloth diapering and 6 months into exclusive cloth-ing (no disposables except the ones given to us for those newbie meconium diapers). With the upcoming arrival of Baby #3 (within the next month or so), I've been researching how to be even "cheaper" when it comes to diapering. Let me explain... Stephen's stash contains about 6 wraps (about $13 each), 18 fitteds (about $7 each), and 10 prefolds ($2 each) along with supplies like a pail, wet bags, cloth wipes, and snappis (probably $300 total). The thing is that all these are size specific and won't fit little Abby. Thankfully we have a few wraps for her along with 8 newborn fitted diapers and 10 small fitteds. Depending on her size she might not fit into any of them for the first month. A side note: newborns can go through 10-12 diapers per DAY so obviously we wouldn't have enough for day one and I'd prefer not to wash diapers twice in a 24 hour period. So what am I to do while staying within the $125 Abby's cloth-diapering budget? Sounds meager now that I think about it, but that's all we can do at this time.
Is a $125 budget even feasible? It sure is!!! You wanna know how? FLATS!!! Yeah- I'm headed OLD SCHOOL! These are the diapers our grandmothers and great-grandmothers used way back in the day and flats are a staple in third world countries when it comes to diapers. I'm getting mine from www.greenmountaindiapers.com and at $25/dozen this is a steal. You can actually purchase flats for far less (maybe $12/dozen), but without the quality and chem-free-ness. I'm also putting three wraps (in GIRL COLORS!) in the budget... these are the Thirsties duo wrap which cost almost $13 each but can fit a newbie to about 15lbs easily. Add a triple pack of snappis for $7.55 and the total comes to $121.55 plus the $6.95 for shipping. Okay so the shipping puts me a little over budget, but I don't include that in my calculations.
Can you tell I love cloth diapering? Yeah- I'm pretty much a nerd, but that's okay. I'm saving money, the environment, and my little people's behinds. I can't imagine NOT CD'ing actually. It's so much fun and my kids love the cotton feeling on their bottoms (my son would actually try to take off the disposables I'd put on him sometimes). I have to say that cloth-diapering was the reason Phoebe was fully potty trained at 2 years old. :-) So if anyone has been thinking about it- maybe this dispels alot of questions or objections you may have. Let me add that this has been one of the best decisions I've made in raising my little ones and if I could I would start from the very beginning with my first. :-D I hope you've enjoyed my little woop-dee-doo rant because I certainly enjoyed talking about it.
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